Tracking the Spread of Coronavirus in Prisons

For weeks, lawyers, criminal justice reform advocates and families of the incarcerated have worried about what was happening in prisons across the nation as coronavirus began to take hold in the communities outside. Their fears seem justified.

We now can see, through data collected by The Marshall Project, that thousands of prisoners have caught the illness, and the number of cases has grown more than threefold in the last week alone. Thousands more workers, correctional officers and medical staff have been sickened. And more than 140 people—most of them incarcerated—have died thus far.

There have been at least 9,437 cases of coronavirus reported among prisoners.

Each represents 10 new cases

Source: State and federal prison agencies

For the past month, The Marshall Project has collected data from prison systems in all 50 states and the federal Bureau of Prisons to track how the virus has spread and how prisoners and corrections workers are succumbing to it.

By Wednesday of this week, at least 9,437 people in prison had tested positive for the illness. The number of new cases among